


Substances and the Speech: An Anecdote

by NightCourt_HighLady



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9608171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightCourt_HighLady/pseuds/NightCourt_HighLady
Summary: "If you bothered to do your research, you would find many warnings in the Manual. All of them say approximately the same thing.Do NOT use the Speech when you are drunk, drugged, or otherwise bodily impaired."Nita's friends from her major take her out for her birthday while Kit is working. Hilarity ensues. Featuring Projectile Vomiting and Fitting Revenge.Some drug and alcohol references (obviously) and a description of vomiting that's not that graphic but don't read it if you've got a weak stomach.





	

If you bothered to do your research, you would find many warnings in the Manual. All of them say approximately the same thing.

Do NOT use the Speech when you are drunk, drugged, or otherwise bodily impaired. 

It would go on to explain that while some species found their wizard’s abilities enhanced by their versions of drugs or alcohol, humans are always impaired slightly. Different drugs have different imperative effects, and there are a few that wizards are told on no uncertain terms not to experiment with, for their physical health (including methadone, LSD, and cocaine in all forms). 

But some of the milder, less instantaneously addictive ones, the Manual just gives you the information and lets you make your own decisions. Much like information on the Internet, it’s there. Just waiting for you to look and find out what you want to know about the effect of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, or an assortment of smoked plants.

Most wizards found this section when they were making sure that copious tea, coffee, or soda consuming would not negatively affect their wizardry. Or if it did, how it did. 

Some came back to it when they hit their country’s drinking age, or if they came across a mild recreational drug that they wanted to experiment with. However, most people learned this the hard way.

However, with the exception of caffeine, it is not recommended that you use the Speech with anything in your system stronger than a necessary dose of cough syrup or a prescription to assist your health where the Speech couldn't fix things.

When it came to alcohol and the Speech, Nita had, for once, not done her research.

What she had done was gone to the bar with her friends from her major about three weeks after her twenty-first birthday. She did, however, have the sense to leave her Manual in its otherspace pocket.

Kit had been working that night, and had come back to find their apartment empty and a note saying she was hanging out with her friends. So he simply turned on Netflix and waited until she returned. She didn’t return how he expected.

There was a knock on the door, upon opening it, he saw four tipsy seniors, and a trashed Juanita Callahan. 

“You’re Kit, right?” one of the girls asked. He nodded, still staring slightly dumbfounded at this giggling, drunk Nita. 

“We wanted to take her out for her birthday,” the least drunk of them said, looking a little ashamed, “We didn’t realize she was such a lightweight. She only had five shots.” Kit’s eyebrows shot up as he grinned.

“Yeah,” he replied, “I’ve known her since we were kids. She’s never had more than a sip of alcohol before this.”  The second girl looked distressed. 

“Oh no,” she said, “Well, that explains the gibberish anyway.”

“Gibberish?” Kit asked, uneasy.

“Yeah,” another of the girls said, “After two shots, she started speaking in this language that sounded like a mix of like, every language that ever existed.” Kit wanted to bury his face in his hands. Nita had been using the Speech while drunk? Hopefully the Universe didn’t make this come and bite them both in the butt with this later.

“Oh! Kit said, “Yeah when we were kids, she and her sister argued a lot. So she and I put together a secret language for when we didn’t want to be understood by parents or siblings. We based it off of the elven language in Lord of the Rings.” There. That should cover their bases, and wasn’t entirely untrue on top of it.

“That explains why it sounded so familiar,” the last one said, “I was a huge fan as a child.”

“Kit!” Nita said with a giant grin, “I’m home!” He couldn’t help but chuckle. 

“Yeah, you are,” he said, “And you’re gonna regret this in the morning.” He took her from her friends, nodding as she went on in the Speech, occasionally saying a word or two back to cement the ‘best friend secret language’ story he’d concocted for her friends.

When they finally left, he looked at his Nita for a moment.

“This was very dumb, Neets,” Kit told her, “But I still love you.” She smiled goofily up at him for a moment before a strange expression crossed her face. Unused to drunk people, Kit couldn’t have guessed what would happen next. 

Which was projectile vomiting. Kit began to swear, starting in English and working his way through Spanish before finally making use of some things that Mamvish had taught him. After depositing Nita in the bathroom with a large bottle of water, he rushed back out to the living room to talk the vomit out of the carpet.

Hours later, Nita woke up on the floor of the bathroom with a throbbing headache, a rolling stomach, and a nasty taste in her mouth. On the counter near her was a bottle of gatorade, a glass of water, and some painkillers. She chugged the water with the painkillers, then drank the entire bottle of gatorade. Once this was done, she went ahead and brushed her teeth and took a quick shower so that she felt more human and less… dead.

Finally, she emerged wrapped in a towel, and crept into her and Kit’s room hoping not to wake him up. Unluckily, she saw that the bed was empty, a sure sign that Kit was already up. Maybe he hadn’t seen her come in? 

Finding the most comfortable things she owned to wear, Nita crept quietly into the kitchen, where she found Kit swearing pleasantly at the temperamental stove while making pancakes. He grinned evilly when he saw her.

“Feeling better?” Nita suddenly blushed tomato red.

“Yes, thanks for the gatorade and such,” she replied.

“I was going to be mad, especially after what you did to the carpet,” Kit said, with an amused look at her, “But then I realized I’d get plenty of revenge this morning, as well as the revenge of you sleeping on the bathroom floor.”

“Um…” Nita parsed through her memory, trying to recall  _ what _ exactly she’d done to the carpet, “What on earth happened?” Kit’s grin became wider, making him oddly reminiscent of the Cheshire cat.

“Oh you don’t remember?” Nita shook her head as Kit continued, “You don’t remember getting so drunk you reverted to the Speech trying to talk to your friends? Or my well crafted story for why you were speaking a vaguely comprehensible foreign language? Or the magnificent waterfall projectile vomit that occurred once I got your friends out?” Nita could  _ feel _ the horror on her face. Kit was now laughing himself silly as the whole tale spilled out.

“You compared the Speech to  _ Quenya from Lord of the Rings?? _ ” Nita burst out. 

“What else was I supposed to do?” Kit replied reasonably, “They’d heard you using the Speech, so I had to do some damage control.” 

“So now they have some moderately humiliating, marginally true story of me and my best friend now boyfriend making up a secret language as children to hide from my little sister?”

“Basically. Consider it a fitting pre-revenge for what I had to clean up later.” 

Nita was silent.

“Also,” Kit added, “You may want to apologize to the carpet. A promise of your apology was the only way I could get the stain out. You’d be surprised at how proud the carpet in the living room is.”

“What did I do to it?” Nita asked, “So that I can apologize properly.”

Kit told her.

Nita, for her part, once she had emerged from hiding her face in her hands in shame, apologized profusely to the carpet, telling it quite truthfully that she had no plans to repeat the incident.

And then, Nita went to go research alcohol and the Speech, like she should have done beforehand.


End file.
